I think the question then is how would the person enforce the terms they negotiated when they sold themselves into slavery? If they are able to terminate the agreement if the other party doesn't uphold their side of the agreement, I don't think most people would consider that slavery, but rather a long term contract.

Would you prefer they require books that they don't think are good, or maybe a book that the professor has never read through to see if it's any good? I have a hard time believing that a professor needs a textbook badly enough to force their classes to use it so they can get a free copy. It seems like professors actually evaluating textbooks, and then picking one that they think is good, is a good thing.

I think you nailed it. The problem with his analysis of the analogy is that he doesn't seem to take into consideration the most important aspect of a legal decision, laws. ISP's aren't liable for the content of traffic from subscribers. I have no idea what laws would apply for car rental agencies, but I'm guessing it's not the DMCA.

You cite Wikipedia, and you think you've refuted something? Until you're a judge presiding over a trial, your refutation of anything is worthless. Scholarly papers are a lot more likely to be cited and considered in a court decision than Wikipedia.

If you get rid of the 140 character limit, wouldn't twitter just be livejournal? On livejournal, you had the ability to friend people, and all of their posts would show up on one page. Friending didn't have to be reciprocal on livejournal, which is the only apparent difference between facebook and twitter. Or really, how is twitter different than an email list that anyone can subscribe to?

When twitter was first launching, it seemed to basically be a text message equivalent of an email list. Once people started getting smartphones, I assumed that there would be no reason to use twitter. I'm assuming that twitter is just costing on momentum caused by someone deciding it was cool, and that it's dying.

Alternatively, I'm shaking my fist yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, I'm not sure.

If it's funny because it's a Spaceballs reference, was it funny when it was just in Spaceballs?

I would say yes, it was actually funnier when it was just in Spaceballs. Not having seen Spaceballs, you probably found it almost as funny as a first time watcher of Spaceballs. Unfortunately, when you see Spaceballs, its humor will be diminished. It's a net humor loss for you, gumpish, and I am sorry.

Except that, based on the pro-FSF posts in this story, they want google to give up a significant portion of their copyright so that others can modify and distribute it. In exchange, they will give google nothing. They are trying to pressure google to give up their freedom to release the software they wrote in the way they choose.

So it would be ok if the person who copied the game made it available for free in the marketplace? If anything, I would think that making it available for free would cause the original developer to lose more sales than charging for it, and thus cause more damage to the original developer.

No one's forcing you to get a degree, even if an employer requires it. You can choose for yourself. If you just want to take certain courses, most colleges will let you take them as a non-degree student. They'll even give you a transcript showing that you took whatever courses you wanted as a non-degree student. A degree shows that you met the requirements of the school to receive the degree. If there were no requirements, a degree wouldn't show anything.

The humor, in my opinion, is in arguing subtleties of of language to support a position when the language in question has been through several layers of translation. More so when the quote wasn't written down for years. Even more so when the person who may (or may not) have written it wasn't present (John 4:8, his disciples were gone).